Meet Manuel Dias: Our Man in Portugal!

Some of you might have met our good friend Manuel Dias at the City Market or at the Edible Food Fest in Orange in the past few weeks!

Manuel who has been our teacher, tutor, guide, translator, assistant in navigating the ins and outs of Portuguese red tape, and good friend, has been visiting us from Portugal for the past month, his first visit ever to the United States!

He is a professor of Portuguese literature; is fluent in 3 languages (Portuguese, Spanish, and English); has a masters of jazz from the renowned Hot Club of Lisbon, as a fabulous vocalist singer; is a bonsai hobbyist; and has been collaborating with the University of Évora in computational thinking studies, especially as is related to the learning of languages. Oh and did I mention, a great cook to boot!

In 2008, not long after arriving in Évora Portugal, I contacted Manuel who had been recommended to us as a tutor of Portuguese. We met with him for several months 2 to 3 times a week in an attempt to learn Portuguese which we supposed would not be such a great leap from learning Italian, as Christopher already spoke some Italian and I had been studying while in Sicily. Well, despite Manuel’s good efforts and ours, Portuguese proved to be extremely challenging, and we found ourselves far more engaged in developing a long standing friendship.

How wonderful it has been to have him here and to give him a taste of American culture, and cuisine. We just want to offer our great thanks and appreciation for this great friendship and partnership, in making Rare Lynx possible. We couldn’t have done it without you!